Dactyl (mythology)

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Dactyl (mythology)

In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the Ancient Greece concerning their List of Greek mythological figures#Immortals and Greek hero cult, Cosmology#Metaphysical cosmology, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices....
, the Dactyls (Greek

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
for "finger

Finger

A finger is a type of digit , an organ of manipulation and sensation found in the hands of humans and other primates.Normally humans have five digits, termed phalanges, on each hand ....
s") were the archaic race of small phallic

Phallus

Phallus can refer to a penis, or to an object shaped like a penis. The word comes from Vulgar Latin "phallus", from Ancient Greek "fa????" phallos, penis....
male beings associated with the Great Mother

Mother goddess

A mother goddess is a term used to refer to any goddess associated with motherhood, fertility, creation or the bountiful embodiment of the Earth....
, whether as Cybele

Cybele

Cybele , was the Phrygian deification of the Earth Mother. As with Greek Gaia , or her Minoan civilization equivalent Rhea , Cybele embodies the fertile Earth, a goddess of caverns and mountains, walls and fortresses, nature, wild animals ....
or Rhea

Rhea (mythology)

This page is about the Greek mythological figure. For the bird, see Rhea .Rhea was the Titan daughter of Ouranos , the sky, and Gaia , the earth, in Classical Greece mythology....
. Their numbers vary, but often they were ten spirit-men so like the three Curetes

Curetes

The term Curetes may refer to:*The dancing attendants of Rhea , also known as Korybantes.*An early Ancient Greece tribe: Curetes ....
, the Cabiri or the Korybantes

Korybantes

The Korybantes were the crested dancers who worshiped the Phrygian goddess Cybele with drumming and dancing. They are also called the Kurbantes in Phrygia, and Corybants in an older English language transcription....
that they were often interchangeable. The Dactyls were both ancient smiths and healing magicians. In some myths, they are in Hephaestus

Hephaestus

Hephaestus was a Greek god whose Roman equivalent was Vulcan . He was the god of technology, blacksmiths, craftsmen, artisans, sculpture, metals, metallurgy, Fire and volcanoes....
' employ, and they taught metalworking, mathematics, and the alphabet to humans.

When Rhea, the mother of the gods, knew her time of delivery was come, she went to the sacred cave on Mount Ida

Mount Ida

In Greek mythology, two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida, the "Mountain of the Goddess": Mount Ida, Crete, and Mount Ida, Turkey, known as Mount Ida, Turkey in Classical times....
.

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In Greek mythology

Greek mythology

Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
for "finger

Finger

Phallus

Mother goddess

A mother goddess is a term used to refer to any goddess associated with motherhood, fertility, creation or the bountiful embodiment of the Earth....
, whether as Cybele

Cybele

Rhea (mythology)

Curetes

The term Curetes may refer to:*The dancing attendants of Rhea , also known as Korybantes.*An early Ancient Greece tribe: Curetes ....
, the Cabiri or the Korybantes

Korybantes

Hephaestus

Mount Ida

In Greek mythology, two sacred mountains are called Mount Ida, the "Mountain of the Goddess": Mount Ida, Crete, and Mount Ida, Turkey, known as Mount Ida, Turkey in Classical times....
. As she squatted in labor she dug her fingers into the earth (Gaia

Gaia (mythology)

Gaia Gaia is a Greek primordial gods and chthonic deity in the Ancient Greek Pantheon and considered a Mother Goddess or Great Goddess....
), which brought forth these daktyloi Idaioi ("Idaean fingers"), thus often ten in number, or sometimes multiplied into a race of ten tens. Three is just as often given as their number. They are sometimes instead numbered as thirty-three. When Greeks offered a most solemn oath, often they would press their hands against the earth as they uttered it.

The Dactyls of Mount Ida in Phrygia

Phrygia

In antiquity, Phrygia was a kingdom in the west central part of Anatolia, in what is now modern-day Turkey. The Phrygians initially lived in the Southern Balkans; according to Herodotus, under the name of Bryges, changing it to Phruges after their final migration to Anatolia, via the Hellespont....
invented the art of working metals into usable shapes with fire; Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert

Walter Burkert , a scholar of Greek mythology and Cult , is an emeritus professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, and also has taught in the United Kingdom and the United States....
surmises that, as the societies of lesser gods mirrored actual cult associations, guilds of smiths corresponded to the daktyloi in real life. They also discovered iron. Three Phrygian Dactyls, in the service of the Great Mother as Adraste, are usually named Acmon (the anvil

Anvil

An anvil is a manufacturing tool, made of a hard and massive block of stone or metal used as a support for chiseling and hammering other objects, such as in forging iron and steel items....
), Damnameneus (the hammer

Hammer

A hammer is a tool meant to deliver an impact to an object. The most common uses are for driving Nail s, fitting parts, and breaking up objects....
), and Celmis (casting

Casting

In metalworking, casting involves pouring a liquid metal into a Mold_, which contains a hollow cavity of the desired shape, and then is allowed to solidify....
). Of Celmis, Ovid

Ovid

Publius Ovidius Naso was a Roman Empire poet known as Ovid to the English language-speaking world, who wrote about love, seduction, and Roman mythology transformation....
(in Metamorphoses
Metamorphoses (poem)

The Metamorphoses by the Ancient Rome poet Ovid is a Narrative poetry in fifteen books that describes the Creation myth and history of the world....
iv) made a story that when Rhea was offended at this childhood companion of Zeus

Zeus

Zeus in Greek mythology is the king of the gods, the ruler of Mount Olympus and the god of the sky father and List of thunder gods. His symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull , and oak....
, she asked Zeus to turn him to diamond-hard adamant

Adamant

Adamantand similar words are used to refer to any especially hardness substance, whether composed of diamond, some other gemstone, or some type of metal....
, like a tempered blade. Zeus obliged.

Later Greek attempts to justify and rationalize the relationships of Dactyls, Curetes and Corybantes were never fully successful. Strabo

Strabo

Strabo was a Ancient Greeks history, geography and philosophy....
says of the mythographers:

"And they suspect that both the Kouretes and the Korybantes were offspring of the Daktyloi Idaioi; at any rate, the first hundred men born in Crete were called Idaian Daktyloi, they say, and these were born of nine Kouretes, for each of these begot ten children who were called Idaian Daktyloi." (Strabo, Geography 10.3.22)

The Cabiri (Kabeiroi) whose sacred place was on the island of Samothrace, were understood by Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus

Diodorus Siculus , was a Roman Greece historian who flourished in the 1st century BC. According to Diodorus' own work, he was born at Agira in Sicily ....
to have been Idaean dactyls who had come west from Phrygia and whose magical practices had made local converts to their secret cult.

On Rhodes, Telchines

Telchines

In Greek mythology, the Telchines were the original inhabitants of the island of Rhodes, and were known in Crete and Cyprus. They were regarded as excellent metallurgists....
were the name given to similar chthonic

Chthonic

Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Ancient Greek religion.Greek khthon is one of several words for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the Landscape or the land as territory ....
men, nine in number, remembered by Greeks as dangerous Underworld

Underworld

In the study of mythology and religion, the underworld is a generic term approximately equivalent to the lay term afterlife, referring to any place to which newly the dead souls go....
smiths and magicians, and multiplied into an entire autochthonous race that had reared Poseidon

Poseidon

In Greek mythology, Poseidon was the god of the sea and, as "Earth-Shaker," of earthquakes. The name of the god Nethuns in Etruscan mythology was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon....
but had been supplanted by Apollo

Apollo

In Greek mythology and Roman mythology, Apollo , is one of the most important and many-sided of the Twelve Olympians. The ideal of the kouros , Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more....
in his Helios

Helios

Helios is the god of sun.In Greek mythology the sun was personified as Helios . Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion , while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn....
role.

In Crete, three Dactyls bore names suggestive of healing: Paionios (later associated with Asclepius

Asclepius

Asclepius is the god of medicine and healing in ancient Greek mythology. Asclepius represents the healing aspect of the medical arts, while his daughters Hygieia, Meditrina, Iaso, Aceso, Aglaea and Panacea symbolize the forces of cleanliness, medicine, and healing, respectively....
), Epimedes, and Iasios. It was said that they had introduced the smithing of copper and iron. Of Iasion

Iasion

In Greek mythology, Iasion or Iasus was usually the son of Electra and Zeus and brother of Dardanus. Iasion founded the mystic rites on the island of Samothrace....
it was told (Hesiod

Hesiod

Hesiod was a Greek language oral poet, his date is uncertain but leading scholars agree that Hesiod lived in the latter half of the Eighth-century BCE....
, Theogony 970) that he lay with Demeter

Demeter

File:Demeter in horse chariot w daughter kore 83d40m wikiC Tempio Y di Selinunte sec VIa.JPGDemeter , in Greek mythology, is the Goddess of cereal and fertility, the pure....
, a stand-in for Rhea, in a thrice-ploughed field and the Goddess brought forth Ploutos

Plutus

In Greek mythology, Ploutos , usually Romanized as Plutus, was equally a son of the pre-Hellenic Cretan Demeter? and the demigod Iasion, with whom she lay in a thrice-ploughed field? and, in the mythic context of Eleusinian Mysteries, also the divine child, the issue of the ravisher, the child and boy-double of the "wealthy" Hades ....
, "wealth", in the form of a bountiful harvest. Zeus struck down this impious archaic figure with a thunderbolt

Thunderbolt

A thunderbolt is a traditional expression for a discharge of lightning or a symbolic representation thereof. In its original usage the word may also have been a description of meteors, although this is not currently the case....
. This is all of the public version of this myth that survives. Doubtless, initiates must have known more.

An Idaean dactyl named Herakles (perhaps the earliest embodiment of the later hero

Heracles

In Greek mythology, Heracles or Herakles meaning "glory of Hera", or "Glorious through Hera" Alcides or Alcaeus " was a hero, the son of Zeus and Alcmene, foster son of Amphitryon and great-grandson of Perseus....
) originated the Olympic Games

Olympic Games

The Olympic Games are an international multi-sport event established for both summer and winter sports. There have been two generations of the Olympic Games; the first were the Ancient Olympic Games held at Olympia, Greece, Greece....
by instigating a race among his four "finger" brothers. This Herakles was the "thumb"; his brothers were Aeonius (forefinger), Epimedes (middle finger), Jasius (ring finger/healing finger), and Idas (little finger).

Dactyl (mythology)

See also

External links